


home is

by orphan_account



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Chickens, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kittens, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After escaping from Thiel’s manor, Eduardo and Mark build the peaceful life they deserve.





	home is

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [hard times for dreamers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20319193) by [sundays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundays/pseuds/sundays). 

> This story is a sequel to and was entirely inspired by sundays’ incredible fic. I’m so happy that she posted this beautiful work, and grateful to be able to add on to it! You should absolutely go read it before reading this sequel. 
> 
> This is a historical AU, set vaguely in medieval/Renaissance times. I made little to no attempt to stick to historical accuracy, so expect some anachronisms! 
> 
> This is actually my first fic, so comments are appreciated and loved! And let me know if you’re still loving TSN in 2019 :) 
> 
> Warning: Brief and vague reference to past sexual assault/ abuse.

Eduardo wasn’t sure how long the cottage had been empty.

“Cottage is a pretty euphemistic term,” Mark said dryly, when Eduardo wondered the question out loud. “I think shack might be more appropriate. Hut, if we’re feeling generous.” 

And, sure. It was a little run down. A few years’ worth of debris had cluttered up in the corners. The north corner of the roof looked like it was one strong breeze away from falling in. The land surrounding it was a mess, wild and overgrown. But it was theirs, and Eduardo loved it from the moment he saw it. 

“Neither of us are particularly skilled in architecture or carpentry, so that roof is going to be a problem,” Mark said, after walking around the cottage’s circumference. 

“You learned Ancient Greek from picking up a book a couple of times,” Eduardo pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you can learn anything. Besides, we have some money, and we have things to trade— we can always go into the city and pay someone to help us.” 

“I should’ve read more about this before we left, though. I could’ve learned about farming, building, fishing, useful things. We talked so much about how to escape, we should’ve thought about what we were actually going to do once we got here. I don’t know why you had me messing around with Antigone when I could’ve been doing something practical.”

Eduardo walked over, wrapping his arms around Mark’s waist, his back pressing to Mark’s front. He wondered if it was ever going to stop feeling like he was opening a gift every time he got to touch Mark. Especially now that he knew there was no one to catch them. “Because I loved how happy you looked when you read something you liked,” he said, turning his head to kiss the side of Mark’s neck. “And I knew that we’d figure out whatever problems we had as long as we stayed together.” 

“Of course you’d be an optimist,” Mark grumbled. “I’m going to be spending the rest of my life with someone who insists on looking at the silver lining.” 

Eduardo went still at first, then gently nudged at Mark’s hip until Mark had turned around in his arms. “The rest of your life?” 

Mark colored (Eduardo absolutely loved when he blushed. One night, just before they left, the friendly serving girl had brought them up a bottle of wine, and two glasses in, Eduardo had told Mark how much he liked the blushing. Mark went redder than he’d ever seen, and pretended like he hadn’t heard what Eduardo said). He couldn’t quite meet Eduardo’s eyes. “That’s the plan, yeah. Obviously.” 

“Obviously,” Eduardo echoed, happier than he’d ever been, not caring how much it showed on his face. He leaned in, and they kissed until Mark started tugging Eduardo into the cottage, saying they could put down a blanket so the dust wouldn’t bother them. Eduardo was all too eager to follow. 

It hadn’t been easy, finding their home (although there wasn’t much in their lives that had been easy. Except for loving Mark, that had come as easily to him as breathing did). At first, after they’d left the inn, everything felt like pure joy, like kissing Mark for the first time. The night had been warm, stars dotting the velvet sky like diamonds, like a scene from a story. The forest was quiet, trees stretching up and over them like a canopy. Eduardo had told Mark he felt like the richest man in the world. Mark had smiled, tucked his head into Eduardo’s shoulder, kissed the space just beneath his ear, and Eduardo knew that meant that Mark felt the same. 

But then morning came, and they were hot, and they were hungry. Mark’s beloved books weighed down their satchels. Eduardo still felt a little shaky on his feet, and although Mark wouldn’t say it, Eduardo knew that he still felt aches as well. And they walked, and they walked, and the worried voice at the back of Eduardo’s head only grew louder, until finally, they could see the outline of the tall city towers up ahead. And it was there, at the outskirts of the city, they found the cottage. They found their cottage. 

~~  
“It can’t be that hard,” Eduardo reasoned, trying to coax the skeptical look off Mark’s face. “I bet they’ll practically take care of themselves.” 

The roof was fixed, now. The inside was tidy, if a little bare. They’d had good luck bartering in town, taking the silks and trinkets they’d grabbed from Thiel and trading them for wood, for crop seeds, for a few pieces of rickety furniture. 

Mark did not seem very impressed with Eduardo’s latest trade. 

“That one is currently trying to eat a rock,” Mark said, pointing at one of the fluffy white chickens, who-- yes, fine, was apparently a bit confused about her dietary needs. “Which doesn’t seem like the actions of a self-sustaining animal. I’m frankly surprised that they made it to a full-grown age if that’s their intelligence level.” 

“Think of how useful they’ll be!” Eduardo pointed out. “They’ll lay eggs for us to trade in town. We’re nearly out of things to trade from Thiel’s, and we should save up as much of our money as we can. They’ll--” 

“--Get rid of our rocks for us?” 

“-- Have extra eggs for us to use for breakfast. It’s going to take a little while for the crops to start bearing food. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to forage for half the day? We can just go into our backyard instead.” 

Mark didn’t look that impressed, but that could have been because the same chicken had moved onto pecking at his shoe. 

“Fine,” he said shortly. They’ve never been very good at saying no to each other. “But no other animals.” 

~~

Two weeks later, Eduardo was hurrying home from the market, trying to get out of the rain, when he heard a chorus of unhappy mewls coming from the alley. 

Ten minutes later, Eduardo came into the cottage, his arms filled with three very soaked and very tiny kittens. 

Mark looked up from his book, curled up and warm in his chair, a bowl near his feet to collect the dripping water (Eduardo was going to have to patch that spot in the roof up tomorrow). 

His look became exasperated as soon as he saw the kittens, although there was a hint of fondness in his expression. “Are all these animals supposed to be some kind of a kid thing? Is this you letting me know that you want a baby? Because the miller’s wife--”

“--You know her name, her name’s Elizabeth and her husband’s Geoffrey.” 

“--She’s apparently having her seventh kid, and so we could just kidnap that one, if that’s what this is about. We probably wouldn’t even have to grab it, I bet they’d pay us to take it off their hands.” 

At this point, Eduardo had dried the kittens off with his cloak, and had plopped them in Mark’s lap, ignoring Mark’s noise of complaint. One of them was happily batting at a dangling string from Mark’s shirt. “Look at that! They like you.” 

“We are not keeping them,” Mark said, although his hand had already drifted to the top of the playful one’s head, rubbing behind his ears.

They name the kittens after characters in the Iliad: Odysseus, Cassandra, and Ajax. Mark suggested Achilles and Patroclus for the two boys, but Eduardo said no. 

“It’s way too sad. We’re not giving our kittens sad names,” he argued. “It’s bad luck. Besides, they’re brothers--” 

“--They’re cats, Wardo, I don’t think they have the same concept of brothers as we do--” 

“--and I don’t care what you say, but clearly Achilles and Patrocles’ friendship was much more romantic than brotherly.” 

“The text never explicitly says that. At least, not Homer’s version,” Mark replied, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a smile. They’d debated this at least twice before. 

“It doesn’t have to. You can tell. They’d do anything for each other. Like I’d do anything for you.” 

“So sentimental,” Mark said, but he was pleased, his cheeks a faint pink. Eduardo kissed the left one, then the right, then his mouth drifted down to Mark’s neck, and soon the talking had stopped, had turned into wordless moans and the breathy cries that Mark only made for him. For no one else, just him. 

~~

Cass and Ody quickly discovered that they like to curl up together in a ball at Eduardo’s feet as soon as he got into bed. Ajax liked to drape himself over Mark in whatever way he could. Sometimes he’d sprawl out over Mark’s hip, or plop himself in the center of Mark’s back, or even curl up on the pillow next to Mark’s head. Mark said he hated it and complained frequently, but Eduardo had caught him sneaking bits of breakfast to Ajax at least half a dozen times, so he didn’t take the protests that seriously. 

Eduardo knew that something was wrong when he felt Ajax sprint over him in the middle of the night, little claws digging into Eduardo’s arm as he leapt away. When he sat up, he saw Mark, his muscles too stiff, small panicked noise escaping him. 

“Mark,” he said as he shook Mark’s arm, gentle at first, then firmer, trying to wake Mark out of whatever nightmare had its grip on him. “Mark, hey, come on, come--” 

Mark woke up with a jolt, out of breath, disoriented. He was still for a moment, except for the harsh pants of his breath. Then he seemed to crumble, elbows resting on his knees as he pressed his palms over his face. “Shit,” he said, sounding angry. “Shit.” 

Eduardo rested a hand on his back. Mark flinched at the first touch, but settled a moment later. 

“What was it about?” he asked. His voice sounded too loud in the heavy silence of the room. 

“What do you think it was about?” Mark snapped back. Eduardo bit back any response, waited. 

Eventually, Mark sighed a little, lifting his head. “I was in the dining room with him,” he started. There was no need to say who the “him” was. “Underneath the table. I’d been there for hours. My jaw was fucking killing me, and my knees were sore and bruised, and he kept his hand on my neck. Right around my throat, squeezing really fucking hard if I was going too fast or slow or whatever it was that he didn’t like. He did that, sometimes. I wondered a lot if someday he’d just kill me.” 

“Mark,” Eduardo said, his voice small, scared. What kind of idiot was he, to be scared of someone who was dead? 

Mark continued as if Eduardo hadn’t said a word. His eyes were blank, unfocused, staring at nothing, at ghosts that Eduardo couldn’t see. “And it wasn’t just him. There were all these other men there. And they kept pulling at me, at my hair, at my wrists, from one to the other, all these hands grabbing me. I knew I was going to be down there forever, that my whole life was going to be underneath there, with all their hands. Then I woke up,” Mark said, as tonelessly and as matter-of-fact as he was when he pointed out that one of the chickens was out of the coop.

Eduardo let his hand curl around to Mark’s side, scooting closer to him, resting a chin on Mark’s shoulder. “You’re never going to be there again.” 

“I know that,” Mark said, frustrated. “He’s dead, and we’re not. We’re here, and everything’s good, it’s, I never thought it could be so-- There’s just no reason for these stupid dreams. When I’m-- safe now. And everything’s good. It just-- it doesn’t make sense.”

Eduardo dipped his head, pressing a kiss to Mark’s bare shoulder. “Not everything makes sense,” he said quietly, although he knew that Mark hated that idea, that it wasn’t how his mind wanted to sort the world. “I missed my father, after he sold me. I had plenty of dreams where he’d show up to the manor and bring me home. Tell me how much he’d missed me. My father was more likely to grow wings and fly than ever tell me that stuff, but I dreamed of it.” 

“You were nine,” Mark said with a huff. “Of course a nine year old would have illogical dreams. But I’m not a little kid, Wardo.” 

“I don’t think it’s the age. I just think… something bad happened, and it left sort of… I don’t know, a scar. After all the awful shit you had to go through… of course it would leave a scar on you too.” 

Mark settled back down into the pillows, grasping Eduardo tightly to him. “Talk to me about something. Anything. Just. Something good.” 

Eduardo turned his head, kissing Mark’s curls. There was no better smell in the world than him. “Okay. In a couple years, we’ll have saved up a good amount of money. The crops will have grown enough to sell, and we’ll find work in town, and who knows, maybe the chickens will lay some golden eggs. And then we’ll pack up our things and wrangle the cats and chickens together and we’ll go into the heart of the city. Find a university. And you can study classics, and I can study economics, and I’ll get to watch you show up everybody else in your class…” 

He talked until his voice felt a little hoarse, until Mark’s breathing had gone heavy and slow and even. The stress from earlier was gone, and if he was dreaming again, his dreams were peaceful. 

Sometimes Eduardo was the one to dream, and he dreamed of Mark’s tear-streaked face, looking up desperately from under that fucking table. He dreamed of Mark shouting at him, all the things that he thought about himself when the night got too quiet and his head got too loud. In his dreams, Mark would be shouting that Eduardo could have stopped it, could have saved him, that Mark was going to leave and find someone who wasn’t so weak, wasn’t such a coward. Those were the nights that Mark would be the one to wake him up, and Eduardo would shake so badly that Mark’s face would go pinched and drawn with concern. Mark didn’t really say much, seemed unsure of what to say in times like these. But he pulled Eduardo close and held him until the shaking slowed. “I love you,” he said quietly. Said it over again: “Wardo. I love you.” It turned out that that was the only thing Eduardo really needed to hear.  
~~

If he had to pick, the mornings were probably his favorite part of the day. 

He woke up a little earlier than Mark, most days. Cass and Ody would follow him out, trail after him. Ajax would stay right with Mark. He’d go about the morning chores: feed the cats, then the chickens, gather their eggs. Mark would stumble out with a yawn by the time he’d started breakfast. Eduardo was trying to learn to bake bread, but he wasn’t very good at it yet. Mark always took two pieces of thick toast anyways, stubbornly said it tasted just fine to him. Mark would say that he just wanted the bread, no eggs, and then he’d eat half the eggs of Eduardo’s plate. Eduardo didn’t mind. He’d give Mark anything. 

He liked the way that the sun lit up Mark in the mornings at their kitchen table. His curls were sandy brown when the rays hit them, his eyes looked bluer. Eduardo could see the color and roundness in his cheeks. No more sallow skin, no more thinness that worried him. He knew that after breakfast, they’d go into town together, do a few odd jobs. The merchant needed an assistant, and it sounded like he wanted Mark’s help— who wouldn’t? They’d make dinner, read by the fire. Fall into bed, take their time together. No one would interrupt their touches. They were safe. 

It was going to be a good day.


End file.
